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Over at vimeo.com you can see a collection of other DPs showreels. Enjoy and learn.

1. Save on food
   Budget properly for catering. The more so if your crew is underpaid. The more so, the longer the shoot is.
   Doesn’t cost much more, but does wonders for crew morale.
2. 16 hour days, 5 days a week
   Just because this film is the No.1 priority for you, doesn’t mean it is for everyone else on set. Not only does the crew have a right to a life as well, and not only do they need to be able to work on their next film, but overworking the crew makes you liable for accidents that may – and eventuall will – happen.
   If all these arguments don’t count: My experience is that 6 days with 16 hours are not more productive than 5 days with 10 hours.
3. Concentrate on the money shots
   While nice for marketing and your show-reel, the audience will only sit through your film if it is good in its entity, not just some scenes.
4. Who needs a DP – I can buy a camera instead?
   An experienced cameraman will free you to concentrate on telling the story by giving your actors good instructions. An experienced cameraman will speed up the production by knowing what to shoot, what will work visually, which lenses to use, which stock to use, and many more things that you have never heard of. more…

1. Large, loft-style apartments in New York City are well within the price range of most people-whether they are employed or not.
2. At least one of a pair of identical twins is born evil.
3. Should you decide to defuse a bomb, don’t worry which wire to cut. You will always choose the right one.
4. Most laptop computers are powerful enough to override the communications system of any invading alien society.
5. It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts: your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessors.
6. When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in your bedroom will still be clearly visible, just slightly bluish.
7. If you are blonde and pretty, it is possible to become a world expert on nuclear fission at the age of 22.
8. Honest and hard working policemen are traditionally gunned down three days before their retirement.
9. Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their arch enemies using complicated machinery involving fuses, pulley systems, deadly gasses, lasers, and man-eating sharks, which will allow their captives at least 20 minutes to escape.
10. All beds have special L-shaped cover sheets that reach the armpit level on a woman but only to waist level on the man lying beside her.
11. All grocery shopping bags contain at least one stick of French bread.
12. It’s easy for anyone to land a plane providing there is someone in the control tower to talk you down.
13. Once applied, lipstick will never rub off-even while scuba diving.
14. You’re very likely to survive any battle in any war unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of your sweetheart back home.
15. When swimming, hair is always perfectly groomed.
16. When a villian catches the Hero, the villian will first explain how the Hero will be killed. Then the villan will continue explaining his evil master plan. He will then leave – presumably to let the Hero die. Magically, the Hero escapes.
17. Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German or Russian officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A German or Russian accent will do.
18. The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window in Paris.
19. A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating, but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.
20. If a large pane of glass is visible, someone will be thrown through it before long.
21. If staying in a haunted house, women should investigate any strange noises in their most revealing underwear.
22. Word processors never display a cursor on screen but will always say: Enter Password Now.
23. Even when driving down a perfectly straight road, it is necessary to turn the steering wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments.
24. All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they’re going to go off.
25. Bombs will not be defuse until the last second.
26. A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty.
27. If you decide to start dancing in the street, everyone you meet will know all the steps.
28. Police departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite.
29. When they are alone, all foreign military officers prefer to speak to each other in English
30. It is incredible simple to enlarge a blurry picture to reveal new details.
31. If you are an aging actor, it is best to surround yourself with very young love interests. No one will notice you age any longer.
32. No matter how big an army, and how many machine guns the soldiers have – a hero will always succeed in killing them all.
33. A hero can effortlessly kill 150 nasty guys. But the moment the Big Baddie arrives, the following fight will lasts minutes.

Because Iraq has become such a dangerous place, hardly any journalists remain in the country the US is practically at war with. There are only sparse reports as how the situation is outside the areas with strong troop representation.
An article in a newspaper brought a couple of blogs to my attention that are written by Iraqi citizens, living and struggling in their country. more…

Since some security guards do not value freedom of speech and love to stop photographers from doing their job, here is a downloadable “Your Rights and Remedies When Stopped or Confronted for Photography” – which fits right into your wallet.

Very handy!

And a nice list on how to be creative:

Everyone is born creative; everyone is given a box of crayons in kindergarten

If you wonder which plugins I use on my wordpress installation, here comes a list.

So far I have mostly avoided doing any metablogging, but today I came across this very useful list: Wordpress maintenance checklist. Even includes a handy pdf sheet.

And if you are on the lookout for a new theme, and have good time on your hands to decide, here is a collection of almost 1000 themes.

On the norwegian language site video1 I found a nicely compiled list of recources of OSX software. All levels of experience catered for. For those who are not fluent in Norwegian, here it comes:

Newbies

iMovie

• Apple iMovie Support
• Apple iMovie Tutorials
• The “Unofficial” iMovie FAQ
• Lynda.com – iMovie Video Tutorials

more…

…is one of my favourite directors. About a year ago I found a list of 50 golden rules he has made. Very insightful.

My Golden Rules

by Wim Wenders

1. You have a choice of being “in the business” or of making movies. If you’d rather do business, don’t hesitate. You’ll get richer, but you won’t have as much fun!
2. If you have nothing to say, don’t feel obliged to pretend you do.
3. If you do have something to say, you’d better stick to it. (But then don’t give too many interviews.) more…

I haven’t used Internet Explorer for quite a while, mainly for two reasons.

1. The Mac version hasn’t been updated for a couple of years (yes, years)
2. It’s Ugly
3. It’s Microsoft
4. Points #2 and #3 count as one

Today when I checked the stats for this blog I had to smile when I saw the percentages for the browsers at

Firefox	41
Internet Explorer	28
Safari	26

Not only is IE long way from #1, but also Safari is close on it’s heels. Good.

On the bottom end of the percentages we find

Camino	2
Opera	1
Mozilla	1
Konqueror	1

Two of which, Camino and Konqueror, I have never heard of? Are those flavours of Mozilla?